A KINDER, GENTLER TRUMP? – Donald Trump, or those advising Trump, are starting to take the necessary steps to undo some of the damage Trump's statements made during the primary campaign.  It remains to be seen how much repair work will be successful.  From The Hill:

Prominent Hispanic conservatives say they could back Donald Trump if the presumptive GOP nominee changes his tone and walks back some of his policy positions.

Republican Latino leaders have chaffed at Trump’s call for a wall on the southern border and statements from his campaign launch about rapists and criminals coming across the border from Mexico.

The tone and policy positions have contributed to Trump’s unpopularity with Hispanics. Trump trailed Clinton by 39 points among Hispanic voters in a Fox News Latino poll released on Friday.
But prominent voices in the conservative Hispanic world say they’re ready to move toward Trump if he can move toward them.

Alfonso Aguilar, a former White House official under President George W. Bush who now leads the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said he’d be open to a conversation.

Aguilar has criticized Trump in the past, but he praised the presumptive nominee’s decision to send a video to this weekend’s National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). Trump's video aired Friday night, along with one from Clinton.

“If in the process of unification, he were to seek my support and show he’s willing to change his tone and be open to some form of legalization, I would be willing to reconsider my position,” he said.

“He’s done with the Latino community, he’s done with the Latino conservatives,” Aguilar said on Fox News in October. “If Donald Trump is the GOP candidate, we won’t work to support him and we are sure he will lose the general election because there’s no way a GOP candidate can win the White House if they don’t get more support from Latino voters.”

COMMENT:  The question is whether Trump can sustain any reconciliation.  His mouth is big, his restraint is small.  Some of his economic messages can resonate with both Hispanics and blacks, if he would present them correctly and respectfully.  Let's see what his charm offensive brings.

Just yesterday Trump shot off his mouth after the crash of the Egyptian airliner into the Mediterranean, asserting, with no proof whatever, that it was an act of terror and that Islamists were behind it.  That outburst was unpresidential, and will, legitimately, be held against him.  The Clintonistas are already basing their campaign on the idea that Trump is temperamentally unsuited for the presidency.  Unfortunately, Trump sometimes goes out of his way to prove their point.

May 21, 2016